Whiting: Firearms expand toll when violence erupts

Firearms expert Greg Block offers tips at a shooting range. The Huntington Beach resident is a certified firearms instructor across a score of departments including the FBI. He says video games and prescription drugs are the root causes of increased violence.TEXT BY DAVID WHITING, COURTESY OF GREG BLOCK

Let's agree on something else. Guns were invented to kill living things because they are far more efficient than bows and arrows, catapults, clubs, swords ...

I agree with my Second Amendment buddies. Guns don't kill people.

But people certainly do, and that's why it's time to get serious about change.

• • •

I was 6 years old when my dad gave me a BB rifle. We headed into the Topanga Canyon hills, and I learned to load, aim and fire. I was in heaven. But heaven was short-lived.

My mom made the gun disappear, and guns were never allowed in our home again. As a young reporter, I learned quick draw from a professional cowboy, visited a few police ranges, hunted rabbits in Oregon and went target shooting with some friends who were Vietnam War vets.

Until a recent class on handguns, that was about the extent of my direct experience with firearms. Luckily – at least as far as this column is concerned – I have more experience with violence.

I've had my nose broken with a forearm, been knocked out with a glass beer pitcher, had a black eye from a fist, suffered a cracked rib from a punch, been covered in blood from a split lip.

Since my mom reads the Register, I'll stop. Let's just say that before I settled into adulthood, I was in some gnarly fights after tempers flared.

What would have happened if a gun were involved?

• • •

After the shootings Tuesday, I ask a top firearms expert the same question but flip it.

What if guns weren't present during Tuesday's series of shootings?

Name a firearms certification, Greg Block has it – FBI, ATF, NRA, DOJ. A Huntington Beach resident, Block is credentialed to teach everything from SWAT tactics to how to handle a submachine gun.

Block tells me: "Guns are not the issue. You can find lots of articles where kids stab their parents, take hammers to their heads, baseball bats."

An instructor for city, county, state and federal agencies for three decades, Block makes a good point. Almost anything can be used as a weapon.

Firearms expert Greg Block offers tips at a shooting range. The Huntington Beach resident is a certified firearms instructor across a score of departments including the FBI. He says video games and prescription drugs are the root causes of increased violence. TEXT BY DAVID WHITING, COURTESY OF GREG BLOCK
A California Highway patrol officer tapes off the McFadden Avenue off ramp of the southbound 55 freeway after a person was fatally shot during an apparent carjacking incident there early Tuesday morning. The carjacking was part of a series of events that killed four people and wounded two others as the suspected shooter took at least two cars from other drivers before being pulled over in Orange where he shot himself before police could contact him. BRUCE CHAMBERS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Orange County Sheriff's department personnel investigate the scene of a shooting on Red Leaf Lane in Ladera Ranch on Tuesday. One woman was shot and killed at the location. Authorities believe Ladera Ranch was the start of a shooting spree that ended in Orange leaving four dead and two wounded. PAUL BERSEBACH, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Neighborhood kids look at a house (with car) on Red Leaf Lane in Ladera Ranch where a woman was shot and killed on Tuesday. Authorities believe Ladera Ranch was the start of a shooting spree that ended in Orange leaving four dead and two wounded. PAUL BERSEBACH, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
The body of an unidentified man was covered with a yellow tarp and traffic cones marked pieces of evidence in an early morning carjacking and shooting Tuesday in the parking lot of the Micro Center computer store at Del Amo and Edinger Avenues in Tustin. Two people were shot at this location, but only one was transported to a local hospital. BRUCE CHAMBERS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Dave Grossman author of "Stop Teaching Our Kids To Kill" speaks at The Summit on West Virginia Safe Schools at the Culture Center in Charleston, W.V., on Feb. 6. The summit brought together educators and law enforcement officials to consider practical steps to prevent and prepare for school violence. CRAIG CUNNINGHAM, CHARLESTON DAILY MAIL

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